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Nisan comments on Several Topics that May or May Not deserve their own Post - Less Wrong
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Comments (69)
Sometimes with small children, I get the impression they're asking "why?" for the social interaction rather than to actually get answers. I'm not sure I'm right about this, but it can be very tiresome to give serious answers to questions under those circumstances.
Any thoughts about how to tell whether a child wants real answers? If it is for the social interaction, what's a graceful way to handle it without squelching real curiosity?
I agree about the comfort of giving up hope , or at least that's a plausible explanation for why I'm seeing people so sure of their pessimism being correct when the future is so hard to predict.
The story I tell myself about this is that at some point every child learns that there is a magic word, "why", that always keeps a conversation going. I will test this hypothesis the next time a kid does this to me by responding with nonsense.
"Why?"
"Because zebra donkey tomatillos."
"Why?"
"See, you're not even listening."
"Why?"
This reminds me of Louis CK's bit about kids asking "why?"
Louis C. K.: Because some things are and some things are not!
Daughter: Why?
Louis: Because things that are not can't be!
Daughter: Why?
Louis: Because then nothing wouldn't be! You can't have nothing isn't! Everything is!
Daughter: Why?
Louis: Because if nothing wasn't, there would be all kinds of shit that we don't like. Giant ants with top hats dancing around. There isn't room for that shit!
...You know, that dialogue is disturbingly like ancient and Pre-socratic discussions of Parmenides.
I predict the answer is:
"No, that's silly!"
(I've tried something similar to this with a friend's kid.)
I suspect that they'd be much more likely to notice if the sentence doesn't make grammatical sense. In the grammatical but nonsensical versions they might be listening and even then just lack the ability to understand fully if they've been given a good explanation. In some cases "why" might even be shorthand for not understanding the previous explanation.
You appear to have an audio bug in my house.
Just because I'm curious, what probability would you assign to your hypothesis being correct?
50%. And I'd only do it when I'm irritated. The irritation means they don't care about the answer.
EDIT: Sorry, I mean 50% probability that they won't notice I'm talking nonsense. I don't want to assign a probability to the underlying hypothesis.